Marco Polo's journeys to China and the Far East established him as one of history’s greatest explorers but archeologists now believe he never actually went there.
By Nick Squires, Rome
They think it more likely that the Venetian merchant adventurer picked up second-hand stories of China, Japan and the Mongol Empire from Persian merchants whom he met on the shores of the Black Sea – thousands of miles short of the Orient. He then cobbled them together with other scraps of information for what became a bestselling account, “A Description of the World”, one of the first travel books.
The archeologists point in particular to inconsistencies and inaccuracies in his description of Kublai Khan’s attempted invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281...[continued]
